> Despite a great many serious weaknesses in the way it has been framed - and even more deficiencies in the way it is implemented - the RTE is ostensibly intended to ensure 'equity in education?.

This is political educational theory. It is based on class. It has been tried here and it doesn?t work. Maybe the circumstances in India are different. We have a saying. You can take the girl out of the country but you can?t take the country out of the girl. In dire situations, the deciding factor isn?t equity, it is culture. Educational theory, conventional or political, can?t change culture. The bonds are just too strong. To change culture you need to go far beyond education. You have to take on the entire role of raising the child. And even then, there seems to be a great deal of regression. It makes you wonder if culture is a choice or a fate. My personal belief is that there is a measure, call it a culture quotient or CQ, that measures one?s ability to make good cultural choices. The higher the CQ the better one is in choosing between good cultural elements and bad cultural elements. And the direness we see in some situations in society is not due to IQ but to CQ. I thi!nk as modern society began to shun long standing institutions in favor of personal choice, it left those with low CQ, unable to make such choices, stranded.

Btw, equity in education, in the conventional sense, means that every student has access to a school sufficient to fulfill the goal, to maximize their outcome.